Job Description

The Treehouse: a Forest Garden School

Milwaukie, OR

Waldorf Inspired, Outdoor Early Childhood Education

Substitute Teacher Collective

Join our Substitute Collective with like-minded schools and educators!

The premise: Multiple schools create a Substitute Collective where individual schools hire on Substitute Teachers and then invite them to join the collective. Each teacher can pick and choose what schools they would like to interview for and each school would go through their own hiring process for each teacher, ensuring the best fits.

We are looking for Teachers to join who are:

• Already on staff at a school, but would like more hours and experience.
• Looking to start substitute teaching.
• Already a Substitute Teacher, looking for more opportunities.
• Hoping to gain a wide variety of experience to boost your resume and abilities.
• Looking to complete practicum hours for our ECE degree or certificate.

Benefits:

• Substitutes work for additional schools to gain more, consistent hours.
• Substitutes get a wider range of training between schools, pedagogies, and age groups.
• Schools will have a larger pool of teachers, much like public schools, to contact when Substitutes are needed.

By sharing our resources with each other, hopefully we can make substitute teaching more economically viable for those in early childhood education, while also supporting schools with the constant need of qualified, available substitute teachers.

Please reach out to desirae.thetreehouse@gmail.com if you are a school administrator and interested in joining our collective!

Teachers can go to: Employment | TheTreehouse (thetreehousenurseryandpreschool.org) to apply for a substitute teaching position through The Treehouse and then will be invited to the collective if hired on as a Substitute.

• Pediatric CPR and 1st Aid Certificate.
• Oregon Food Handlers Card.
• Enrollment in the Background Registry.
• Introduction to Child Care Health and Safety (ICCHS).
• Safe Sleep Training (if working with infants).
• Foundations for Learning.
• Recognizing Child Abuse and Neglect.
• Additional RIE infant training is needed in the infant classroom and may be obtained after hiring.

Basic Physical Requirements. Working in early childhood education and especially working at a Forest Garden school requires specific physical abilities:

• Physical ability to lift and carry children and equipment:
  • Ability to lift up to 40 lbs.
  • Ability to lift or carry 13-40 pounds regularly, depending on what class you work in.
• Ability to move safely over uneven terrain.
• Ability to respond quickly to sounds.
• Ability to see and respond to dangerous situations.
• Ability to work in an all weather environment - outside for up to 8hrs (were closed for snow days and follow the wind-heat-chart.pdf which means we may be outside on 90+ degree days) Please highly consider if teaching at The Treehouse is the right fit for you if you are sensitive to heat or cold.
• Will be exposed to illness causing bacteria and viruses:
  • While we have a strict sickness policy at The Treehouse, teachers are naturally exposed to illness, especially because young children are still gaining basic hygiene skills, and infants do not possess these skills at all. Please highly consider if teaching in early childhood is the right fit for you if you have a lower or compromised immune system as it is vital for the sustainability of our program to have staff that are not out sick often.

Knowledge of and/or experience in Waldorf early childhood and Forest School is highly sought after!

All Lead Teachers must be “Teacher Qualified” through the Early Learning Division

Application Instructions

Please email required application materials to desirae.thetreehouse@gmail.com (see below) with the email subject titled: “Substitute Application".

**Please Note: Applications will be dismissed if any of the following is negated.**

Please do not call the school to follow up - we do not have a receptionist.

Application Materials Include:

• Resume.
• Names and phone numbers of three work and/or teaching-related references.
• Cover letter with answers to the following:
  • How has your experience prepared you for the responsibilities of this position?
  • We follow the Waldorf philosophy and teach through an emergent curriculum. How would your approach combine with ours?
  • Our Forest Garden is a dynamic part of our curriculum. Elaborate on your experience and awareness of the Forest School movement and/or Outdoor Education.
  • We encourage our whole staff to use their interests to enrich the overall experience we provide to both children and families. How could your interests and skill set enrich our program?
  • If applying for Infant care:
    • What is your knowledge and experience of RIE?
    • What describes the ideal infant teacher, highlighting the joys and difficulties of infant care.

After an interview, qualified applicants will show the ability to foster and lead a healthy working environment through a working interview.

**Please review our website before applying.**

About The Treehouse: A Forest Garden School

The Treehouse: a Forest Garden School is a nonprofit Waldorf-inspired program for children 6 weeks - 6 years , established in 2010. After a recent move in 2021 and expansion from an in-home school, to a Center, we are now stewarding a 1/3 acre just outside of Portland, Oregon where we are developing a food forest, permaculture learning garden, and offer a holistic education for children to truly thrive! Our core intention at The Treehouse is to develop curiosity by surrounding children with an environment of security, beauty, creativity, and wonder. We are a place where children learn to love themselves, others, and the earth as we engage the head, heart, and hands of each child. At The Treehouse, we support the child, their family, and their community. With our recent expansion to our new center, we have plans to start adult education through community workshops! We offer a unique opportunity for families as a state-certified center providing an indoor classroom dedicated to beauty and a fully equipped outdoor classroom in our forest garden where children will be outside in all weather for up to 6 ½ hours a day. Offering high-quality outdoor education has us pushing the envelope on what state-licensed schools typically offer. Treehouse’s program follows the local school year calendar for children 6 weeks - 6-year-olds and offers a Forest School Summer Program for the same ages. We are eternally grateful for the resources that we have the opportunity to steward and have us striving to give back from our abundance.

The Treehouse: a Forest Garden School is a non profit Waldorf inspired program for children 6 weeks - 6 years, established in 2010. After a recent move and expansion from an in-home school we are now stewarding a 1/4 acre just outside of Portland, Oregon where we are developing a food forest, permaculture learning garden and offer a holistic education for children to truly thrive! We offer a unique opportunity for families as a state certified center providing an indoor classroom dedicated to beauty and a fully equipped outdoor classroom in our forest garden where children will be outside in all weather up to 6 ½ hours a day. Offering high quality outdoor education definitely has us pushing the envelope on what state licensed schools typically offer. Treehouse’s program follows the local school year calendar for children 6 weeks - 6 year olds and offers a Forest School Summer Program for children through the age of 12. We are eternally grateful for the resources that we have the opportunity to steward and have us striving to give back from our abundance.

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